The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

About the book

The great American writer Ernest Hemingway, had this to say about Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn: "All modern, literature, stems from this one book." In this quintessential American novel, Tom Sawyer's best friend, Huckleberry Finn, travels down the Mississippi River on a raft with a slave named Jim, getting himself in and out of danger along the way.read more

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American humorist and writer, who is best known for his enduring novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has been called “the Great American Novel.” Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, Twain held a variety of jobs including typesetter, riverboat pilot, and miner before achieving nationwide attention for his work as a journalist with “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” He earned critical and popular praise for his wit and enjoyed a successful career as a public speaker in addition to his writing. Twain’s works were remarkable for his ability to capture colloquial speech, although his adherence to the vernacular of the time has resulted in the suppression of his works by schools in modern times. Twain’s birth in 1835 coincided with a visit by Halley’s Comet, and Twain predicted, accurately, that he would “go out with it” as well, dying the day following the comet’s return in 1910.read more

Reviews for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Huckleberry Finn is arguably the best American novel of the 19th century. After staging his own murder to escape from his alcoholic father, Huck sets off on a river journey to an island on the Mississippi. While on the island, he finds that he is not the only one that is hiding out. It turns out that Jim, an escaped slave, is also living there. Throughout the novel, Huck wrestles with the moral dilemma of helping the fugitive slave. On one hand, he has been socialized to believe that it is his moral obligation to turn Jim into the authorities, but on the other hand, he has found that Jim is a good man and it is evident that Huck begins to question the system of slavery. Jim and Huck set out on the river with their raft and continue to become entangled in many adventures as they float the Mississippi. At various points in the novel they become embroiled in a feud between two families, participate in schemes concocted by two men who join them on the raft, and work to free Jim as he is held captive by another family that happens to be related to Tom Sawyer, a childhood friend of Huck and a previous character in Tom Sawyer, Twains earlier novel.read more

This is an absolutely amazing book for any reader of any age! Although the dialect & wording are a little difficult to understand & comprehend at first, after you get used to Twain's writing, it goes smoother. The lessons in this book regard racism, slavery, friendships, prejudices, moral dilemmas & decisions, & being loyal as well as honest to yourself.read more

This is a great reread. As an adult, I noticed so much more, and learned so much more. Although very real and detailed with language and events, I loved that factor the most. It was a book that I believe is truly a well deserved classic.read more

This novel is about a young boy, Huck, in search of adventure. He travels the shores of the Mississippi River. Huck is kidnapped by Pap, his drunken father. Pap kidnaps Huck because he wants Huck's $6000. Huck was awarded $6000 from the treasure he and Tom Sawyer found. Huck escapes from a deserted house in the woods and finds a canoe to paddle down the river. Instead of going back to the widow's house, he decides to run away. He finds Jim, a slave, and together, they spend nights and days journeying down the river searching for freedom. Through all of the adventures down the river, Huck learns a variety of life lessons. I love this book I read it several times growing up and had a lot of fun reading it as an adult. I love the humor and the adventure. I think one theme I would address if I used this in the classroom would be Humanity. One example is Huck starts to feel guilty that he is helping free Miss Watson's slave. He says that he thinks he is mean and he doesn't think that she deserves to have her slave stolen. After all, she never did anything to him. Another example of humanity is when Huck sees the King and the Duke tarred and feathered, even though he hates them and thinks they are awful people, he can't help but to feel bad for them. It makes him sick how people can be so cruel to one another.read more

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is an American classic, famous for its use of the local vernacular, which in this case is from the Midwest Mississippi river valley during the 1830's and 40's. This includes the controversial use of racial slurs, commonly heard as a part of the daily conversation of the time. This novel is also a window into a slice of American frontier living which no longer exists, and had mostly disappeared when Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1885.Huck and Jim's adventures are the most engaging at the beginning and end of the novel. I feel the middle loses focus somewhat as Huck Finn becomes more of a secondary player as he crosses paths in the lives of other characters.If you find the dialogued difficult to read, then I recommend listening to a good audiobook version which will capture the exact flavor of how the speech is supposed to sound.read more

Huckleberry Finn is an exceptional example of a book of adventures that deals with a delicate theme such as racisms in a particular period of the USA history. As a good book of adventures, the reader keeps an avid interest in the plot of the story, while he/she is immersed in a situation that embodies a radical change in the social system of values: a white kid, that has been target of physical abuse, finds himself linked to an African-American man that has suffered even a higher level of abuse. The relationship that they will nurse is one of sympathy and reciprocal understanding.The text is itself a source of joy and adventures that challenges the reader to emit a condemning judgment to the circumstances that Jim has to pass through, and this is the educational value of the book, because the reader is exposed to a situation that for its lack of sense (a human being that isn’t owner of his freedom) produces a feeling of compassion towards its oppressed characters.read more